vossiewulf

1. Set the model on a flat surface and make sure the waterline is parallel to that surface. 2. Cut a block that is exact height of the waterline from the surface the ship is sitting on minus half the diameter of your pencil. 3. Tape said pencil to top of the block, and carefully draw the waterline with it all the way around the hull.

The part that's getting me is he's nearly done with planking a good solid 17 days or so since he started the entire build. I wish I could go that fast. Keith, please slow down, the rest of us are feeling inadequate

Sorry Pat thought I had already responded but left it in the editor- I considered removing the rings but it wouldn't have bought enough space to return the beckets and eyes, that's where I was saying something is generally amiss here as there just fundamentally isn't enough room. My understanding of the recoiled/loading position was that the muzzle of the gun was inboard, but here we have less distance between the end of the carriage and the ring than the length of the carriage itself, which means there's no way the muzzle of the gun is going to be inboard after firing and securing with the train tackle. So either the carriages and guns are too big for this ship or the rings need to be considerably nearer the deck center line. And that wouldn't work on one of the guns that's backed up by a big grate. So I've gone with the simpler rig, not to say that they're simple to make now, it's still brain surgery but doing so has made it look at least vaguely like those tackles could have been used to do something. For anyone intending to build Lady Nelson, had I to do it over, I'd move the big grate more toward the stern to clear the one gun it interferes with, move the windlass to the other side of the grate, and move all the train tackle eyebolts much closer to the center of the deck. I'm not making an effort to make the coils perfect and in the same place, my intent is to have it look not like it's ready for inspection but cleared for action. Speaking of that, shouldn't there have been... I've forgotten what they're called but the trays for cannon shot someplace? Admittedly you can carry a 3 pounder round in one hand but I would still think there should be some ready supply on deck somewhere.

How were those frames stored? Fully seasoned or kiln dried castello boxwood shouldn't do that unless stressed.

Yep you're right, I meant Port Arthur, the night time destroyer attack on the Russian fleet.

That's a new one on me, I've never known them as anything but vise grips here. Very handy whatever they're called.

Only thing ThreeDecks has is La Fontaine d'Or, a 24 gun privateer launched in 1676 and sunk in action in 1677.

Jolene, I would take about a 1" wide file to both of those problems, that size file's thickness is about the right size for the bulkhead slots also. You don't have to be super perfect on the slot, you can hold or clamp the bulkhead in the correct place and pin it with CA glue, then fill in any spaces with more CA. If you don't yet have some files, buy some, you need from about 1" wide down to fairly small in size, as for shapes, flat ones and round ones at least. No you don't have to answer me individually, build your ship.

Since she was one of a kind, couldn't it be a unique rig if you haven't been able to find anything else using it?

So as you see it looks like I have to give up the becket and the eye on the line and just seize the line directly to the single block, but it will work. It's distressing that I have to make significant compromises on the accuracy of the rigging; unlike with airplanes where I know based on scale what I can and can't do, I really don't know what you can get away with at what scales in ships. It's also distressing as that means you can't do really good rigging below 1/48, and 1/48 is monstrously big models. Well at least you can't do really good rigging without making yourself a range of specialized super-miniature tools, which I may have to do. Even so, with the nice blocks and line from @Chuck and the right size fly line, the tackles will still look nice and of course only a tiny minority of the people who will look at it will have any idea that anything is missing. It was originally @src's suggestion to eliminate the eyes and beckets but @BANYAN twisted my arm into giving it a try. You're both right, you have to be an eagle-eyed ship modeler to see that things have been simplified and the deck will look much better with the train tackles in place, thanks

That's a wonderful detail that most wouldn't think of. It's one of those things that makes a model really come alive.

Keith, any way you can be talked into leaving that hull natural? Besides the beauty, I'm thinking of your safety - I know a few bars where wood workers hang out where if someone says they intend to paint 100 year old real mahogany, they're going to be lucky to make it out with only tarring and feathering

Since you can't have a really big ship in your house, you should follow Gaetan Bordeleau's build of a 1/24 scale 74 gun ship per Jean Bourdriot's plans. And we look forward to you starting your own build log.

It helps to have the keel up off the building board a few inches, as part of the next task is putting in the bulkheads and the bottom alignment of the bulkheads relative to the keel is one of the key things to get right. If the keel is up, it's a bit easier to see that alignment. But I'm not sure it's worth hurting your wrist to screw them all back out and back in a new position.

If those are sails, they are loose footed and wouldn't cover half the distance between the gaffs in question and the gaffs below. So I don't think they are sails, they are large flags/pennants, this is clearly some kind of special display since they have pennants going from the fore royal and main royal all the way down to the bulwarks.

Haven't had much time to work on this, spent most of yesterday on a conference call because Barclay's screwed up a maintenance release and started failing all their transactions, lots of impact to our merchant base. I have three pics. One is done puddening, which is very probably the most ridiculest sailing jargon word I've come across. It took me several tries with various types of normal and fly-tying thread before I got something usable. The anchors are done, just need to rig them to the ship. Pat, as you see I've tried your suggestion on the blocks, I think it may work I will make the single-block version tomorrow and see if we have enough room now for a proper train tackle. And I also made V2 of my rigging posts, now with 100% more cleats.

Extremely spiffy work across the board, Dan.

Found the proper soundtrack for Amalio's posts:

Yes, if you use a penetrating stain. Dyes sit mostly on the surface and are less prone to problems of uneven absorption. Wipe On Poly is a satin finish. You can get some matte polyurethanes, but I don't think they look very good, the way they do matte creates considerable obscuration of what's underneath- short version is they have poor clarity in my opinion. I haven't found good matte clear coats outside of real nitrocellulose lacquer. In my case I ended up using Tamiya flat lacquer, I decanted it from the spray cans and used my airbrush. It can be used straight from the can, but spray cans don't do light coats well, it tends to be heavy. Another good choice for small quantities is Testor's Dullcote lacquer, that comes in bottles of a few ounces. It's best sprayed with an airbrush, but it can be applied by brush. For larger supplies, I'd recommend Mohawk. Their primary market is musical instruments, they make extremely good lacquer finishes.

Except for the tongue and groove planking, the finger joints on the ends of planks, the fiberglass, and the massive amounts of green bondo

If you prefer not spraying, many people use Wipe On Poly by Minwax. The other thing about oil finishes is they DON'T seal the wood- they offer the least surface protection and unless applied in many coats, almost no slowing of moisture exchange and therefore it offers little mitigation of low/high humidity cycles- if you want your model to last, it's best to apply a real film finish. You can always stain first to get the color that you want, then finish with a clear topcoat. If you don't like pigment stains, look at alcohol-soluble aniline dyes.

Masking tape has limited flexibility and can't really handle what you were trying to do there. I use 3M Vinyl Tape for masking curves, it's extremely flexible. And then I use cheaper masking tape to fill in the masked areas.

Is that the logo for you new company Chris in your profile image? If so can we get a better view?

Don't forget bandaids and hydrogen peroxide, we all make blood donations to our models at some point during construction With all the help you have here Jo, you won't even have to look at the plans, you just have to post a pic of the parts and ask "what next"?

I'm a beginning ship modeler and even I know that one of the top five rules of kit work is throw away all the kit-supplied line or use it to make cat toys and replace it with Syren.